John Grisham - reckoning

1946, Clanton, Mississippi. Pete Banning is a well-respected citizen of the small town, a war hero who has been through hell, a descendant of a well-known family, the father of two adult children, and a devoted member of the Methodist church. On a chilly October morning, the man gets up early as usual, drives downtown, walks into the Methodist church, and with deadly calm shoots his friend, Pastor Dexter Bell. After committing the heinous crime, he does not try to escape, to disappear. Not only the murder causes shock and confusion, but also the man's behavior: it doesn't matter whether the police, the prosecutor or his own lawyer asks why he did what he did, Pete Banning only answers: "I have nothing to say." He is not afraid of death and seems determined not to reveal the motive of his actions to anyone, taking his secret to the grave with him.
The truth is revealed only in the last pages of the novel, the reader only then learns the explanation for the cold-blooded murder. Until then, however, we can learn about many earlier episodes in Pete Banning's life. We get a description rich in gruesome details about the trials the man went through as a soldier in the Philippine jungle, how inhumanely the Japanese treated American prisoners of war; we get an idea of ​​the social conditions that prevailed in the American South during the war years and the period before it; we learn how the fate of the Bannings developed, and it also turns out that a dark secret shadows the family's life. The Reckoning is both a legal crime, a war novel and an accurate chronology.